A wedding and a funeral

As I mentioned in a previous post, Mr. O, a third-year teacher at my high school who had a good friendship with the previous ETA and has been making a lot of efforts to befriend me as well, took me along to a Korean wedding last weekend. I was struck by the experience and wanted to write about it, and since this week I also experienced a Korean memorial service for the first time, it seemed appropriate to write about both.

I hadn't been told what to expect of the wedding. All I knew was that the groom was the son of a former vice-principal of my high school (the father) and the owner of the major bookstore in Suncheon (the mother). I was a little worried about how I would be received, a complete stranger. I met Mr. O and Mr. Ma (also a teacher at Maesan) at the school, and Mr. O drove us to the hotel where the wedding was taking place. The streets were unusually crowded, and parking seemed to be in short supply. At the first lot we tried a young boy was standing in the middle of the lane screaming at cars that started driving in that the lot was full. On the outside of the hotel was a gigantic portrait of a bride and groom, and I wondered briefly if that was the happy couple, though that seemed unlikely (in retrospect it was probably some kind of generic advertisement). The inside of the hotel was extremely crowded, and I then wondered if it was possible that all these people were guests of this wedding. The atmosphere was festive and some hotel staff were giving loaves of cake to guests in exchange for small blue tickets. We hurried to and fro a little--first Mr. O thought we should have lunch first, and then changed his mind. When Mr. O poked his head into a small, empty wedding chapel and then walked off in a different direction, I realized that this was a wedding hall--that a number of weddings seemed to be happening in the same afternoon. As I found later from reading the small, blue ticket I eventually received, that the place was the Royal Tourist Hotel Wedding Hall.

We found the right wedding hall eventually, and walked past flower arrangements as tall as a person and affixed with banners. The hall was standing room only and we got there just as the ceremony was ending. Mr. Ma exchanged some envelopes of money for a number of blue tickets, we showed the usher the tickets and were allowed to stand at the back of the room and watch the end of the ceremony. All I really caught was some praying and waving spotlights. It seemed a little strange to be paying for entrance to a wedding, but I figured that the money probably functioned as a wedding gift or more likely went towards paying for the rental of the hall. From that perspective it made a lot of sense to invite everyone you knew, even if they wouldn't nearly all fit. Our tickets also gained us entrance into one of the various lunch buffets, where we sat at a table with a couple who I imagine was there for someone elses' wedding--though the parents of the groom did stop by to give their regards to us. The buffet was pretty decent, with an array of Korean foods including raw fish.

Directly after the wedding Mr. O and Mr. Ma took me to Nagan Folk Village to see a food festival, and I also ended up watching a cockfight. It was a little disturbing, but not as disturbing as I would have expected. For one, unlike in Nicaragua, these roosters did not have razors attached to their feet and the fight was, ostensibly, not to the death. However, the roosters were pretty enthusiastic--one even appeared to have sustained a bleeding eye injury in the course of the fight. Occasionally the manager of the fight would walk up and separate the two for a moment, and when he picked one rooster up and backed off, the second rooster always ran after him. I'd never realized before watching this that roosters--being one of those male animals that have the instinct to kill or drive off another male whenever they encounter it--could be this persistent. It makes cockfighting seem less brutal than say, dog fighting, where animals that could be naturally social are trained to try to kill each other. I ended up leaving before the fight ended, though, and went home with my two loaves of complimentary pound cake.

At school on Tuesday, when my desk-neighbor Ms. Hwang was giving me the daily announcements in translation, she said, "Do you know Mr. Lee? The third grade teacher? Small man?" She gave a little chuckle and I said yes. I'd actually noticed his absence, since he was one of the teachers that came down from the upper floors and sat on a couch near my desk for the morning meeting, and he always greeted me with a pleased and slight incongrous "Hi Tamara" every morning. Still smiling and without skipping a beat, Ms. Hwang said, "His mother died last night, so we will go to the hospital to pay our respects."

When I came back from the Gyeongju conference a few weeks ago, I found that my host father's sister had died of a long term illness that morning, and I was sort of at a loss for how to respond and further befuddled by how casual everyone seemed about it. This time I sort of knew what to expect. But I was still a little surprised when we went to the hospital, and Mrs. Kim, the chemistry teacher, started giggling at Mr. Lee, the bereaved who was wearing some sort of traditional Korean funeral dress, and said he looked like a bridgegroom.

Korean funerals are generally held at the hospital where the person died, and my school is actually located just a few blocks from the hospital we visited. There was a separate building in back expressedly for wakes. I went with a group of female teachers and tried to follow their lead. In the building, (which seemed, like the wedding hall, to have a few different venues), there was a small room with an altar and a picture of the deceased, and across from it there was a dining area with low tables. I saw the vice-principal there among other people, sitting with a number of students from the high school. First we slipped off our shoes and stepped into the altar area. Mr. Lee and some other men, who I guessed to be his brothers and possibly his father, came from the dining room where they had been socializing and into the altar room when we entered. They were wearing yellow clothes and long yellow hats of a sort of coarse material. They stood to the left of the altar and we faced it. All the teachers bowed their heads for a few moments--maybe offering a silent Christian prayer to balance the apparent Buddhism of the ceremony. The altar was decorated with fruits and incense. Then we all kneeled (I was slightly delayed, since I was playing it by ear) and bowed diagonally towards the bereaved, who also kneeled and bowed towards us. Then we left the area and crossed into the dining room.

Even though we had all had lunch, we were served a few different foods by women who I assumed were the female relatives. They had their own white costumes on over their clothes. Mr. Lee sat down with us, smiling amiably, and it was during that time that Mrs. Kim began giggling. He left when another group arrived to pay their respects and he had to go back to the altar. Mr. O dropped by my desk later that day, and asked me what I had thought about the funeral. When I compared it a little with an American service, he said that the family does view the body of the deceased, but that other people who attend do not.

As we walked back up the hill to the school from the hospital, I inevitably began to think about death, and my own funeral, and whether it was more appropriate to be somber at a funeral, or to be casual and social. Despite the casual aspect, I know that Koreans grieve, of course--Mrs. Lee even descibed to me the intense grief of her husband's eldest brother at the sister's funeral. And I know Mr. Lee was probably grieving as well, even though he looked perfectly happy. However strange it seemed to me, the Korean funeral seems like a very practical institution--you contribute some money to the family and pay your respects, and for the living, life goes on.

Adulthood

I wanted to follow up my last post by saying that last night at dinner my host mother brought up our conversation again. She was very curious why I asked her if she thought I was an adult or not. I didn't quite know how to phrase it to her, since a lot of my feelings lately about being treated like a child aren't exactly rational or easily expressed. I told her that I'd suspected that she didn't think I was an adult, and that was why I had asked. It was clear she understood that my question was a reaction to my homestay situation in some way, and she sort of apologized by saying that the vice principal of our school and my co-teacher are always telling her to make sure I am safe, that I don't go out at night alone or talk to strangers.

I appreciated that apology, even though I don't really feel limited in that respect (I don't have a curfew or anything like that), and I don't mind being looked after to the extent that they do. I didn't really know how to explain that what was bothering me was more of what I percieved as a general disposition of hers towards me--and like I said, I wasn't sure my feelings were really warranted or worth mentioning. So I just said, "Since I don't speak Korean, I feel like a child here, and I don't like feeling that way." Again Mrs. Lee was sympathetic and told me that she would feel the same way if she were in America (though her English is actually pretty good, light-years ahead of my Korean of course). She also conceded that a 21 year old is a child in some ways, but also an adult in some ways.

This morning as we walked into school she even said, "I'm sorry for treating you like a child." It was pretty out of the blue, so I don't know if it was a general statement or referring to something more specific that I had overlooked. It's good to know that she's sensitive and understanding of my position, and I'm going to work harder, for my own sake, at being more patient, and more understanding of her perspective.

As for adulthood, I think it is something that is definitely two-sided, that we can postpone or at least obscure, but at the same time can't. And I think it depends both on our external context and our internal development. As Patrick suggested to me today, I do think it has something to do with the way we relate to other adults, maybe our ability to sympathize with them. So maybe in the same way that my inability to speak Korean has rendered me a child, my difficulties fitting into or relating to Korean culture have also made me child-like.

That previous paragraph reminds me of the situation that sort of sparked my annoyance at my host mother, or my suspicion that she didn't see me as an adult, in either culture. We were driving to work, and she confessed a dream to me that she'd had where she'd had lunch with a strange man and felt feelings of guilt about it. And then she went on, sort of quickly, to talk about the movie, "The Bridges of Madison County" and how when it came out in Korea a lot of women had been affected by it, sympathized with it. Nowadays, women in Korea don't marry really young, but they do definitely have a lot more family responsibilities, in general, than the men do, including a sort of fealty to their husband and in-laws. I've never seen the movie, but I imagine that a lot of women in the U.S. and elsewhere probably identified with it on some level, and I can see why housewives in Korea might be particularly struck by the portrayal of something like that, which I don't think is acknowledged very much in Korea. Then she said to me, "I think you can understand." And I was just thinking yes, I can understand, when she corrected her English and said, "I mean, I don't think you can understand." I don't purport to be able to understand the situation of a married woman feeling nostaligic for more free and romantic days, but when she said that I felt a little insulted. In addition to talking about Korea, she'd talked about the situation of women in the world in general, and for her to tell me that I couldn't understand made me think that she was denying that I was a woman at all, or that I had the ability to percieve the situation of women around me. It made me think, "Just because I'm brand-new to Korea doesn't mean I'm brand-new to the entire world." And when she started talking about the responsibilities of adults in the same sort of exclusive manner a few nights ago, I was reminded of that conversation, and I asked her the question I'd been wanting to ask then.

it's been settled

I discussed it with my host mother, and realized my sneaking suspicion was true: she doesn't see me as an adult. I think living in a homestay after four years of college is something like being forced to revisit your teenage years, except perhaps you're wise enough to realize the stage you're passing through and thus properly meditate on it.

I'm not claiming that I am an adult, even though by the end of our conversation I still wasn't quite sure what excluded me from the category, besides the fact that I'm currently living in a homestay. She seems to think that being married, and the attendant responsibilities, is what makes someone an adult. When I asked about adults who weren't married, like a few of the teachers at our school, she just said that they had few responsibilities, but wasn't very decisive about them. She was very persistent that I wasn't an adult though. She did say that she wasn't an adult at my age either, but the reasons she gave were that Korean youth don't move out of the house until they are married, and when she was my age she was working, but her parents were feeding her and taking care of everything else.

All I know is that my obtuse sense that by coming to Korea I was postponing something turns out to be true, as well: I've gone from being financially dependent on my family for college, to being fed and sheltered by someone else. It seems I'm keeping adulthood at bay, without really wanting to. But maybe I can't say that, or at least claim that I've only postponed adulthood for one more year, until we have a proper definition of adulthood. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

This morning

This morning is the first time since I've gotten to my homestay that I've wanted very strongly not to eat a Korean breakfast. Maybe it's just because over the last couple days the meals have consisted mostly of just kimchi, various different forms of it, and bean sprout or fish soup, and rice. We even ran out of my beloved kim, dried seasoned seaweed. I think my host mother hasn't had the time to make a more substantial meat dish like she usually does. I know my peanut butter is around here somewhere, but I don't think there's any bread. My host mother buys it occasionally, but I don't eat it that much and the kids eat it pretty quickly. I told her once that I think a Korean breakfast is more healthy than an American breakfast, which I believe, but it doesn't create a good situation for sudden American dietary whims. I'm alone in the house right now. My host mother went to Seoul yesterday afternoon for a wedding, and is coming back later today. The kids are at school. In a few minutes I'm going to go down to the bakery on the corner and buy a roll of some kind and some choco-milk.

At one P.M. I'm meeting Mr. O at the school to go to a wedding ceremony. And afterwards we're going hiking. I have no idea what I should wear. I'm just going to try to wear my most formal teaching outfit (which is all I have, really) and make Mr. O take me back to my house to change before we go hiking, despite the fact that I've seen women hiking in dresses and high heels here.

Last night I thought about going out, but instead I sat down and on a whim wrote an 8 page story. Again, I don't really like it all the much, but I do like the fact that I'm writing.

Dynamic Busan

I took a bus to Busan from Suncheon this morning at 8:20. It was about three hours, and it took me about twenty minutes by Busan subway to reach the area of town where the Thai Airways office is located. My host mother had coached me on how to ask people how to get to the appropriate building, but after wandering a little around the neighborhood and asking one convience store clerk who didn't know, I gave up and hailed a taxi. The building was nearby, but I never would have found it myself. I purchased my roundtrip plane ticket to Thailand (560,000 won, in cash, man was my wallet fat) and then walked back to the subway station. On my way I passed an area that looked like a Chinatown, and decided to try to get some non-Korean food for lunch. There were a couple Chinese restaurants, but the area seemed dominated by Russian businesses. The predominance of expatriate businesses reminded me of what a big city Busan is. In Suncheon, there are a fair amount of foreigners considering its size, but one thing I noticed in Busan was that all the foreigners I encountered on the street were old--in other words, probably naturalized. Whereas the majority of foreigners in Suncheon are young Canadians just out of university that are teaching at private cram schools. And there aren't really any foreign businesses to speak of in Suncheon.

I ended up eating at a Filipino restaurant, because I'd never had that kind of food and I thought I could probably read the menu. The waitress was really friendly and spoke English--she explained some of the dishes to me. It was an interesting establishment even though the food was pretty expensive--the place seemed to double as a convenience store, and all the signs were in English as opposed to Korean. A Filipino movie was playing on the TV, but she put on an American DVD for me. It was "Fear Dot Com" (Is that Pauly Shore?), a pretty bad movie but I appreciated the gesture.

I had contemplated sticking around Busan and having dinner with my friend Billie, an ETA there, but there weren't too many buses back to Suncheon and I didn't want to get in too late, so I left around 3 pm. This weekend I have plans with Mr. O, the third year English teacher at my school. Originally we were going to go hiking on Saturday, but it turns out a friend of Mr. O is getting married and so he thought it would be a good opportunity for me to see a Korean wedding. And on Sunday we'll be going to the Nagan Folk Village for the food festival. But I think the weekend after that I'll probably go to Busan again. Jairus tells me they have some pretty cool Halloween parties there.

Reading: Finished "Brighton Rock" by Graham Greene, and on the bus I finished "Ham on Rye" by Charles Bukowski. I liked them both, but I think you probably have to be into those particular styles (which are very different from each other). Partially read on the bus/subway: The July issue of "The Believer" magazine and "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera, which I've been meaning to read for a long time.

they were galloping through the water like little horses

Turns out that, thanks to the generosity of the vice principal, I get to leave for winter break a few days earlier than my contract stipulates--I finish on Friday instead of the following Tuesday--which means I get to spend eight days instead of just five in Thailand, where I'm going to meet Amanda. So I'm excited about that. And I got to finally purchase my plane ticket, not a moment to soon as the prices would have gone up by about 300 dollars as of tomorrow. I do have to go to Busan tomorrow to pick up my tickets and pay for them in cash, because for some reason the tickets I reserved can't be paid for electronically. But it's not even clear whether my debit card would have worked anyway. I'm actually excited to go to Busan, since it's a big city nearby that I've never been to. Again, thanks to the serendipitous generosity of the vice principal, I don't have to go to school tomorrow, which is the last day of midterms (so I don't have classes anyway). In way of accomplishments, I also got a birthday package mailed off to my mom today. Hopefully it will get there in time.

Even though I probably could have gotten most of this week off if I really wanted to, I think it's good that just I stuck around. The school days are only half, and today and on Monday I went out to lunch with a bunch of the teachers. I've been feeling lately that I need to be more social with them--I didn't really realize how much it mattered to some of the teachers until my host mother and co-teacher started hinting around about it, that I should smile more and bow more and say hello.

Monday we went out for 'mudhopper soup' with some other female teachers after school. My host mother believed I was interested in mudhoppers, because a few weeks after getting to Suncheon, I saw a picture of some live mudhoppers and asked her, I thought with apparent horror, what they were. The pictures was zoomed in, so I had no sense of scale. To me they looked like something prehistoric--large bulbous eyes breaking the surface of the water. Turns out they're actually only a few inches long. I became well-acquainted with this fact on Monday. Originally, we were going to have the form of soup where the meat of the fish is ground up. I was actually comforting myself with this fact on the way to lunch, relieved that I wouldn't have to be confronted with those bulbous eyes, when my host mother informed me that because I was curious about mudhoppers, they'd decided to order the kind of soup where 'the form of the body is visible.' Ultimately, the fishes were headless, and I actually enjoyed the flavor of the soup, so I passed through that education fairly painlessly.

Today we went out for shrimp. I really like shrimp, so I was excited. I saw my first live prawns in a large tank at the front of the restaurant. They were oddly elegant. Then I saw my first live animal cooked to death. A kilogram of prawns were brought to the table and placed in a pan with a bed of rock salt. Then the propane was turned on and the writhing prawns began to cook in their own juices, and I could actually see their grey shells turning pink while they struggled. Even though I know that lots of animals are probably cooked alive behind kitchen doors in America, I was a little uncomfortable. But I got over it pretty quickly, and got the knack for the most efficient way to behead a prawn as we got down to eating with our hands. And it was really good of course. Eating out in Korea is often a sort of surprising experience, but I've never found it to be one that I ultimately didn't enjoy. Except for that time I ate a piece of shellfish that definitely had some kind of liver-like shellfish organ inside of it. I just didn't like the taste of that, and it tasted exactly as I was expecting it to. But when your host mother chopsticks something over to your plate you sort of have to eat it.

I've decided that it comes down to taste over aesthetic every time--like today when I noticed at first that there were prawn brains or intensines or something on what I was eating, but when I realized I couldn't taste it, I stopped trying to scrape it off. But that doesn't mean I intend to try dog.

Photos

As you can see, I've figured out how to post photos on my blog. None of these photos are actually mine, though, they were all taken by other ETAs. At some point I may scan some of my photos and post them here, but I'll at least try to post any interesting photos that other ETAs send me. All of the photos I posted today were taken during the six week Orientation we had.

Had a pretty chill week. This week is midterm exams, so the school day is only half, and I don't have to teach anyway. Last weekend I went to Jeonju for the sori festival, which I really enjoyed, and I had fun hanging out with some other ETAs. I hope to check out more festivals, since there's a good number going on every month, some simultaenously. This weekend there's a food festival here in Suncheon, so I'm going to try to go to that.

Over all, things are going pretty good. I'm feeling pretty settled, though still lonely sometimes. Mrs. Lee is intent on teaching me more Korean, which is fortunate for me, though I am a little concerned about us spending so much time together. I'd rather just have her as a host mother, and not as a host mother and a teacher. Recently I've been wishing a little that I wasn't living in a home stay, though I know I'd probably be lonely and more stressed if I wasn't. I'm probably going to take swimming classes, four days a week for a month, starting sometime soon, once we get the logistics checked out. The best part is Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Kim are going to pay for it, as thanks for me tutoring (read: playing games with) their daughters.

I'm doing the SOS orphanage tutoring every Wednesday now--I think this week will be my fourth time. It's gotten easier. The class size for the younger class has dwindled a little, which makes them easier to manage. I'm enjoying the evenings I spend there. It's good to get a little change of scenery, and the kids are nice.

I bought a cool hat in Jeonju. It's just a green baseball cap, but with a sort of stylish cut. It makes me feel a little intimidating. Not really intimidating, but maybe intimidating enough to discourage strange men that want to practice their English with me.

Reading: Finished 'The God of Small Things,' an interesting book. I'm really stocked on books right now, since the Gyeongju conference.

Writing: Wrote ten pages for Matthias. Even though I really dislike them, I'm glad I did some writing. Since he's late in getting me his story, I felt absolved of giving him the new material, so I sent him a story from my thesis.

DMZ

DMZ
Originally uploaded by TJF.

Ms. Park and I

Ms. Park and I
Originally uploaded by TJF.

Hanbok

Hanbok
Originally uploaded by TJF.

Class

Class
Originally uploaded by TJF.

Lee and I

Lee and I
Originally uploaded by TJF.

check that text

I found myself oddly comfortable here in Suncheon after coming back from the ETA conference in Gyeongju. I was expecting to be more unhappy I guess. As my bus pulled into Suncheon, after hours of travel, I tested myself: Does this feel like coming home? Like when I'm coming off the freeway and driving up Buchanan into Albany, passing the old middle school/newer elementary school and onto San Pablo Avenue? Of course it didn't feel like that, I didn't feel that traveler's relief of coming back to a familiar place. Maybe not because Suncheon wasn't familiar, or I wasn't relieved to be done traveling, but it wasn't enough to counteract the sadness of leaving my friends. But when I got back to the apartment and saw my host family, (and gave them the musical monk doll that I'd bought at a temple in Gyeongju) I did feel relaxed. Maybe a little like I'd come back a different, more comfortable person. It was the longest amount of time I'd left my host family for (Friday-Monday), so maybe that made it a little different for me than for other ETAs. I did get like three teachers tell me that I looked healthy or more beautiful since I came back, which is nicer than the common, "Your face looks red today," that I get from my host mother.

But I did find myself missing my ETA friends almost immediately (maybe even before I left). Being alone is lonely but okay. Being around people you love reminds you of how much you need them.

Yesterday was the teachers' athletic competition. We were all assigned to teams and different sports. The class periods were actually each shortened by 5 minutes to provide time for this; around 4 pm all the teachers left the school and gathered in the playing field area. Some of the students watched us from the classroom windows. I think they were supposed to be 'self-studying.' I was assigned to basketball, and two games I was unfamiliar with: a Korean game of tossing bamboo sticks into a basket and a game that I think was expressedly invented for the competition, which involved rolling a soccer ball into a target-shaped area on the ground, and trying to get it into the highest point area.

Basketball was actually just shooting baskets, and I got 1 out of 3 (of course I did better when I was just practicing.) With the stick-throwing game I did pretty good on my second round; it sort of reminded me of darts, which I used to play a lot--some of the same tactics, but similar to darts it also takes some time to get the hang of the right way to throw, and some of the sticks were different lengths, and thus different weights, which made it more challenging.

The really tasty roast pig that we ate was one of my favorite parts, though second to listening to the vice principal yell, "Chachachachacha!" everytime he attempted something, like rolling the soccer ball or playing a traditional Korean dice game that sort of reminded me of cribbage. I also enjoyed watching the teachers interact in a casual, social way, like competitively teasing each other, or yelling things like, "Aja!" with their fists in the air, or in English, "Nice shot!" or "C'mon c'mon c'mon!" There was also a raffle, and I won a package of tissue boxes, which was appropriate since I've been sneezing like crazy for the past three weeks or so.

So over all this week has been a pretty relaxing one. I'm heading to Jeonju for a pansori festival (a type of Korean music) either tonight or tomorrow morning. Next week is midterms, so I'll be spending most of the week at school but not teaching--so doing some grading and lesson planning.

Listening: to a cool mix cd that my sister Azelyn put into a care package that my mom mailed off weeks and weeks ago that finally came (lemondrops, smarties, a few issues of my The Believer subscription, and a nice purse that my mom actually made, among other things).

Writing: nothing for a long long time, but I've been challenged by a friend here, Matthias, and we're both required to give the other a story by this Sunday evening. I haven't written, or at least completed, anything new in awhile, so I'm a bit nervous, but it's good motivation.

no words for it

Even after it's been shown that Iraq has lacked the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction since 1990s (!!), Bush is still trying to claim that the war in Iraq, which has resulted in the deaths of thousands, has 'made the world a safer place.'

Please, please, please vote in November, and think hard about it. Forget about partisanship; it's just an issue of conscience now.

P.S. My hope about the outcome of the first presidential debate helping Kerry out in the polls came true; Kerry and Bush are now at what most news sources are calling a 'dead heat'--neck and neck.

Hopes and prayers

Today was a pretty full one.

This morning was my turn to lead the morning worship service at my school. This is something all the teachers are expected to do, whether they are Christian or not. This means selecting and announcing a hymn, reading a scripture of choice, and then offering a prayer.

I actually found myself not being that nervous about it, until my host mother kept asking me if I was nervous a couple days before I had to stand up and give it. Her turn was the day before mine, and she mentioned a couple times how preoccupied she was. But she said I didn't have to worry, since I would be speaking in English, and most of the teachers wouldn't understand me. This made me think that the prayer was the biggest worry for her, since in my case, though I would read the scripture aloud in English, everyone had Korean-English Bibles and would read the scripture I chose in their own language.

On the way to school this morning, my host mother offered this advice: "Be relaxed and easy. Be like you are calling your mother." I was a little confused at first, thinking that she meant that I should think of my mother in order to be relaxed in front of all the teachers. Then I realized she meant to pray to God as if He were my mother. I was a little worried about the prayer. Picking a song and a scripture is relatively easy. But enough people would be present that understood English, including the school's minister, to make me worry about my prayer being too short, or at least to keep me from starting out with "Dear Mom."

But it went fairly smoothly. I stood up when the time came (I heard a few gasps of surprise; I guess despite the fact that this was mandatory there were still teachers who weren't expecting me to do it), and read off the hymn number in Korean. I was encouraged by the "Joayo," of approval I heard behind me (good). The hymn, incidentally, was "Amazing Grace." Despite a Mormon upbringing, it was one of the only non-Christmas hymns I could find in the Korean-English hymnal that I recognized. (I looked for "The Spirit of God Like A Fire Is Burning" but it wasn't there). "Amazing Grace" was also slow enough that I thought maybe I could sing along in Korean. But some of the syllables were sort of unusual and difficult to sound out so I just stood there and followed along with my eyes. Then I read out the chapter and verse of the scripture I'd chosen (1 Corinthians 4:5) in Korean, and then read the scripture in English. This was followed by a short prayer, which midway garnered an "Amen" from the minister, when I asked for the students to be blessed with health in mind and body (I'm sincerely a little afraid of them going crazy from too much studying, and a lot of them have been spending class with their heads on their desks lately, since they don't take sick days ever). After the announcements were done, Mr. O came over looking very excited and complimented me, saying he was very surprised that I knew so much Korean.

In general my classes went pretty well today. Only two teachers showed up to my weekly teacher workshop, since everyone is pretty busy preparing for the final. We discussed an article I'd selected about a Native American tribe in California protesting the expansion of the Shasta Dam, and I'd meant to spend the time talking about Native Americans, since the teachers had told me previously that they were interested in learning about American culture. But as usual, the conversation took on a life of it's own, and my host mother, Mr. Im and I went from talking about fish hatcheries to how I like to prepare salmon, to what turkey tastes like. Eventually I learned that lettuce in Korea (or maybe everywhere, I don't know) has been scientifcally shown to have a chemical that makes one sleepy after eating it, causing many Korean high school students to avoid it--instead they opt for sesame leaves to wrap their barbequed meat in.

The day took a turn for the worse, however, when Mr. Choi, the man who came to my school before Chuseok, showed up again. I'd just gotten back from class and sat down at my desk when he tapped me on the shoulder, and I remembered how I'd been quietly dreading his return. He'd not intimidating per se, but I didn't really trust him, since I'd decided that he was being dishonest in order to talk to me (I didn't believe he was going to San Francisco, much less believe that he really needed me to provide him with tourist information gleaned from the internet). Too make matters worse, he came with cakes and juice for me, the cakes obviously a little expensive. I made it clear I didn't really want to accept, but did eventually, since I thought it would be very rude not too. He said he'd brought me lunch, and I said I was really busy, and he said he wanted to ask me a few questions. Then he pulled out a bunch of xeroxed maps of the San Francisco Bay Area. I sort of enjoyed looking at all the familiar cities and roads on the map, but I was pretty uncomfortable most of the time, and trying to think of how to throw him off. He asked me some sort of random, dead-end questions, like, had I ever been to South San Francisco? Then he took out a book that he said was his English studying material. It was a large pamphlet that had something to do with U.S. military tactics for disarmament. Then he pulled out some other materials, which I recognized as the kind of English-language stuff that the U.S. Embassy distributes--a summary of American literature and a booklet of the U.S. constitution, etc. He tried to make a gift of these to me but I told him I already had them. He also took out an ID wallet that had some kind of U.S. military shield on one side and what looked like someone's business card in the plastic window. It was a man's name, and he had some kind of military association, but I couldn't make out a rank or department. He told me that this was the name of his English teacher, a man that he'd met on the U.S. military base in Seoul, who had taught him English for three years and now lived in Washington D.C.

I wasn't dishonest when I informed him that the food he'd brought me was considered dessert in the U.S. and that I would eat lunch at the school cafeteria before I ate the cakes. I really did want to eat soon, since it was getting late and the food would be gone if I didn't get there in time. I thought he would take this as a clue to go, but instead he said he would come with me and eat with me. I was a little bewildered, but I couldn't think of how to say no, and got up to go to the cafeteria, while he lagged behind getting his papers together. In the hall, I ran into Mr. Im, and told him that there was a man that wanted to eat lunch in the teacher's cafeteria, and was that possible? Hoping that Mr. Im would set him straight. Mr. Choi caught up with us, looking a little irritated or unsettled, maybe at my prompt abandonment of him, and Mr. Im asked him his name and what he needed. I went into the cafeteria--sure enough there was only one side dish and some soup--bright red with hot pepper---left along with the rice. As I was getting my food, Mr. Choi came in and told me he would just sit with me and drink his juice while I ate.

I was surprised to see that when I lifted a clump of rice to my mouth with my chopsticks, my hand was visibly shaking. I didn't feel afraid, but apparently I was much more nervous than I'd realized. I ate without saying much, deciding to just take it as it came, and Mr. Choi got out his maps again and asked me if there was an army base in San Francisco. I actually couldn't really tell if he was asking me or telling me, and I said I wasn't sure. He went on to ask about aircraft carriers and warships, and I just kind of shook my head and said I didn't think there were warships in the San Francisco Bay, though of course I wasn't sure. Then he admitted that he liked the U.S. army, which didn't really come as a surprise, since he was using booklets from them to study English. I was sort of neutral about this fact. It didn't really make me feel better about him, but it did explain his unusual questions. (Though I could easily let my paranoia run away with me, there's no reason to believe that he was asking those questions out of anything but curiosity).

At one point I asked him why he was going to San Francisco, maybe betraying my skeptcisim, and he just said something like "Travel" and then took out his map of the U.S. to tell me he'd heard that the United States had different time zones. At one point in our somewhat one-sided question he did ask, "Everything okay?" with a sort of nervous laugh, but it didn't occur to me until later that maybe he was noticing that I wasn't very happy to be in his presence (or more accurately, I felt rather trapped and uncomfortable).

When I finished eating and told him I had to get back to work, I was very busy, he said something a little jumbled about a "mistake" and he was sorry to come here, and then said something about going to Seoul. I just looked at him and said, "You are going to Seoul?" and he sort of stuttered some more, and sort of jabbed me in the arm a couple times in a way that I think was meant to be apologetic. I said that I was sorry, I was just very busy, that Tuesdays were very busy for me (which is actually true), and went back to the teacher's room. I started sorting through my student's notebooks from the previous classes. He came in after me and gathered his stuff together and then said good-bye, and left. I felt relieved to finally see him go, but still sort of nervous. Even the food he'd left bothered me, so I put one of the cakes on the main table in the teacher's room for other people to eat, and tried to focus on grading assignments. It felt unusual to be so nervous, but at the same time, I generally find awkward social situations like that sort of nerve-wracking, or at least I'm often more likely to just go along with whatever than to tell a stranger off, especially a persisent stranger (maybe why I didn't just tell him from the get-go that I wasn't ever going to have time to talk to him about San Francisco). Even getting Mr. Im somewhat involved earlier was almost an act of desperation, though I'm glad to say I probably appeared fairly calm. I'm hoping that Mr. Choi's not coming back, that his talk about Seoul was some kind of way of saying that he wasn't coming back while saving face, and that he doesn't just show up some other day that isn't Tuesday.

My host mother just came back from school a few minutes ago. She saw the pound cake the man had given me, sitting on the kitchen table waiting for someone other than me to eat it, and laughed. We talked about the man a little--she called him strange, I called him scary. She thought he was sort of funny looking, especially his hat. She'd actually spoken with him before I came back from class and saw him, and she said that his Korean was strangely accented, as if he was speaking Korean with an English-speaker's accent. She thought maybe he was doing it on purpose. I told her about his interests in the U.S. military, and she told me that other teachers in the teacher's room had been curious about him. Apparently I'd turned red at some point, and they'd encouraged her to go over and talk to him and see what was going on.

I'd left the school at 6 pm feeling like I'd had a bad day. Seeing Mr. Choi had been unpleasant, and before I left I was hurrying to get the bulk of that day's schoolwork graded. I won't go into my mishap with the squat toilet in the high school's restroom. But when I got on the bus I encountered one of my students, who was on her way to academy, and then when I gave up my seat for an older woman she tried to refuse and then, as the bus got more crowded, insisted on holding my bag. Later an old woman with a small boy got on, and the woman in my seat generously held him on her lap. Then, as the bus lurched around, I accidentally stepped on the foot of the old woman who was standing. I instinctively mumbled some apology in English, and we had a little miscommunication as she thought maybe I was trying to get off and she was in my way, and sort of climbed up on some of the railings to clear the aisle. Then the seated woman interjected and started talking about me kindly, and then my student, who was standing behind me, leaned over and told them that I was a teacher at her high school. They continued to discuss me in warm tones, and it sort of felt like the opposite of what has caused me frustration lately. I was again being talked about in Korean, understanding only the gist of it. But the fact that it was two total strangers on the bus, who for a change seemed pleased with me as an American capitalizing off of their country's maybe unfortunate Western obsession, made it somehow a comforting experience.

the face-off

After almost a week of little internet and none of my usual newspaper reading, I came to school to find that the first presidential debate was today. Since I didn't have class first or second period, I got to watch about an hour of Bush and Kerry going at it, as well as some of the pre-debate coverage. I found myself gritting my teeth a few times, as Bush kept beating a dead horse over Kerry's "inconsistency" (or as Kerry would put it, his "ability to admit a mistake") and once again trying to paint the world in terms of black and white. I wish someone could challenge his repeated assertion that obviously Iraq is very important in the war on terror, because the fact that Iraqis are fighting against American troops show that they "hate liberty," putting them in league with Osama Bin Laden. How convenient. You hit someone and when they hit you back that just proves you right for hitting them in the first place. Maybe the one good outcome of Bush having a one-track mind at the debate was that I think Kerry finally fully responded to the flip-flop accusation, and I think he did a pretty good job of it. I think he could have said more about the fact that saying the war in Iraq was ill-advised is not an insult to the troops currently there, as Bush kept insisting, but by the end of the hour that I got to watch it seemed like he'd sort of gotten that idea across as well. It seemed like Bush's goal was to make any criticism of the current Iraq situation equal to treachery. According to him, any questioning of what had already been established in Iraq (American troops, the three or four allied countries, and the prime minister) was somehow proof that Kerry was unfit as president, because he wasn't supportive enough of the efforts there. It seems like such a base, and maybe desperate, view of things.

I was mostly following the debate based on sound, since the streaming video I watched on CSPAN was fuzzy and kept freezing up, but even with that, I could see Bush getting upset while Kerry really kept his cool. It was gratifying. I really hope, as Klaus over at Slate.com is predicting, that this raises Kerry in the polls a bit, but I don't know if I'm that optimistic.